Dish, Dolly, and Other Words for Dame
by Coyote Soupus
Summary: "It has been established time and time again that fate has a sense of humor—today, apparently, it also had a sense of timing and precision, because it was just as Steve was starting to get up that inspiration struck him full in the face. Inspiration, in this scenario, was a small Asian girl on rollerblades."


_I like Steve a lot. I have a weakness for OC's. I was bored. Boom. This happened. _

_Could be read as Steve/OC, could be read as friendship. Honestly I sort of look at it as both, but there's only two genres available for selection and humor absolutely had to be one of them, so. _

* * *

Steve stared dispassionately down at his sketchpad.

His sketchpad, it seemed, stared back. The page was empty but for a few erased shades of past attempts, and all that white space was mocking him. He furrowed his brow and gripped his pencil tighter, bringing it to the page but unwilling to make a single mark.

He was stuck. Bogged down. _Blocked_. Nothing he tried today came out quite right. Steve drew a circle and looked at it, then, huffing a little, flipped the pencil around and erased it. He swiped the shavings off the paper and returned to staring fruitlessly.

Steve broke the stare-off first and looked away, glancing at the park around him. Normally inspiration came to him so easily in places like this: full of noise and people and _life_. Steve could be alone without needing to feel alone—and as it stood he was alone a lot these days.

Shaking that unintentionally depressing thought away from the forefront of his mind, he sighed and began to close his sketchbook, deciding he wasn't going to get much done this way and he might as well go get a sandwich at that cafe on the corner.

It has been established time and time again that fate has a sense of humor—today, apparently, it also had a sense of timing and precision, because it was just as Steve was starting to get up that inspiration struck him full in the face.

Inspiration, in this scenario, was a small Asian girl on rollerblades. And for the sake of narrative integrity it would be more appropriate to say that inspiration struck him in the stomach, after which they, he and the be-rollerbladed girl, both fell.

The girl, possessing less mass and surface area than the super soldier but considerably more velocity, ricocheted off Steve's chest like a ping pong ball off a brick wall. Steve, for his part, sat back down sooner than he'd intended and with a bit of an "_oof_."

He stared in abject horror at the girl's splayed form—_had he just murdered a child?_ It took another second for him to scramble off the bench and to her side. "Miss? Miss, are you all right?"

She mumbled something sounding vaguely like _Ganondorf_.

Steve reached out to help her up and she went easily and a bit dazedly, blinking at him once she was upright and looking around.

"Miss?" hazarded Steve, a little desperately. She rubbed at her helmet and looked around them. People were starting to stare. That snapped something into her, and she straightened fully, looking back to him with wide eyes.

"I totally just ran into you," she realized, then covered her face with her hands and groaned. Steve hovered uncertainly, still kneeling. "Oh my gosh, I am _so_ sorry."

"No harm done," he said, smiling more to ease her worries than from any real desire to smile—she still looked a little out of it. "Uh, but, are you alright? You took a bit of a tumble."

He took a moment to look at the girl, then—and noticed that she was not a girl but was, in fact, a woman. She was in possession of... attributes... that prepubescent girls did not have. He tried not to blush too bad, looking at her shrewdly as she unclipped her helmet and massaged at the back of her neck with a wince.

"Yeah, I'm fine, I think," she mumbled, checking herself over before starting to stand. Steve stood with her, holding his hands out to either side of her like he was scared that she was going to keel over and faint any moment. She noticed this and met his gaze for the first time—she had dark eyes that, at the moment, still looked very embarrassed, and rightly so. "I'm fine," she repeated. Steve took the hint and let his hands drop, a little embarrassed as well.

Her eyes dropped. "Is that yours?" she asked, and before he could stop her she was bending to pick up his sketchbook—having forgotten, apparently, that she was wearing rollerblades and just how unstable wheels attached to a person's feet can make them.

Gravity would have claimed its victim had Steve not caught her. Being a super soldier had its benefits: super reflexes were one of them.

His arm, however, was in an unfortunate position. The girl tensed and Steve very nearly squawked before streaming apologies, his face now bright red as he hastily removed his hands.

"You know what," she said finally, interrupting him mid-apology. "I think I'll take these off." She sat unsteadily on the bench and began to untie the rollerblades from her feet. Steve exhaled, still blushing like a scandalized maiden, but at least the flurried apologies had stopped.

She took notice of the sketchbook again and managed to pick it up safely this time. "Here," she said, handing it to him. "Sorry for running into you."

He took it, clutching it tightly. "Thanks," he said. "And I'm sorry for, uh..." He reddened even further and made a vague gesture with his hands. "You know." Someone could have used Steve as a Christmas ornament, he was blushing so bright. He'd make a good nose for Rudolph.

She smiled, which wasn't helping what felt like a wildfire in his face cool down any more. "No harm done," she echoed him and smiled a little wider, which made a dimple sink into existence on her right cheek. After a moment of thought she extended her hand to shake. "I'm Lucille—Lucy," she corrected herself. Dimple again. She had very long eyelashes, which made her eyes look a little bovine.

That wasn't an insult. Cows are well-known for having ridiculously pretty eyes, and hers had none of the flat blankness that typically comes with chewing your own cud.

Steve didn't know why he was comparing her eyelashes to that of a cow's inside his head. He took her hand and was careful not to squeeze too hard as he shook it. He returned her smile completely by accident, which was not too bad a feeling. "Steve," he replied.

"Nice to meet you, Steve," said Lucy. "Are you an artist?"

Somewhere, on whatever far-fetched plane of existence where perceived non-entities live and breathe and occasionally play cards, Fate nearly fractured a rib laughing.


End file.
